Tangled Rose by Abby Weeks

I
    R OSE MEADOWS LAY ON THE narrow bed of the motel room and stared at the ceiling. A wooden fan on the roof slowly rotated and her eyes followed the blades in their endless circular movement. The room was small and dimly lit. A pair of thin cotton curtains covered the window but she could tell it was daylight outside.
    She was a prisoner.
    She didn’t know how long she’d been lying on the bed, two days, maybe three. She’d been unconscious. They’d drugged her. Now she was awake. She was thirsty. Her throat was so dry she wasn’t sure she’d be able to speak if she tried.
    She tried to move her arms but she couldn’t. Her wrists were fastened to the posts of the bed with leather cords. Her ankles were too. She’d spent the first night struggling against them but it only made it worse. The harder she struggled, the tighter they got. Eventually, they’d torn into her flesh and left deep sores in her skin. She was startled at how quickly she’d lost her will to struggle against them. Maybe it had been the drug they’d given her, maybe the pain of the cords cutting into her flesh, but she stopped pulling against them and now she just lay there.
    She was lying, spread-eagled, facing the ceiling. She was in as vulnerable and exposed a position as it was possible for a woman to be. She was wearing her full-body, leather racing suit. She was glad of that. It offered her some protection from the eyes of the men who sporadically entered the room and looked at her as if she was some strange animal they’d captured.
    She looked at the window. She had no idea where she was. It was a motel room of some kind. The bed was simple. There was a wooden chair at a desk and two side tables with lamps. There was an upholstered armchair in the corner close to the bed. The walls looked yellowish, like they’d been stained by years of tobacco smoke. There was a door leading to a bathroom and Rose wished she was free to get up and use it. If they left her tied up much longer she’d soil herself.
    For all she knew, that was precisely what they wanted.
    She was their prisoner.
    She’d allowed herself to fall into the hands of the Dark Rebel Motorcycle Club, the DRMC, one of the most brutal and notorious MCs in all of Quebec.
    *
    H OW HAD SHE BEEN SO STUPID?
    How had she allowed this to happen?
    Just a few days ago she’d been free, living her life in Montreal. She was a waitress. She had her own apartment. She was enrolled to study fashion in one of the city’s colleges in the fall. She belonged back there, not here in this remote, desolate place at the very edge of civilization.
    Her life in the city hadn’t always been easy, she was often alone, she had no family and few friends. She struggled to pay her bills. But at least it had been her life and she’d been proud of it. Now it was gone. Just like that, everything had been taken from her.
    The town she was in, Val-d’Or, was hundreds of miles north of the nearest city. It was a thousand miles from Montreal. She’d made the ride up herself. And it had all happened because of one man, one foul, evil man.
    Rex Savage . The name revolved around in her mind like the fan blades on the ceiling. He was the reason she was here. He was the one who’d betrayed her. She’d been so stupid to trust him, so naive, and now she was paying the price.
    She thought she could trust him because he’d ridden with her father. They’d both been members of the Sioux Rangers. She’d been wrong.
    Her father died ten years ago and she missed him terribly. Not a day went by that she didn’t think about him. When his old friend, Rex Savage, walked into the restaurant she worked at she would have believed anything he told her.
    And this was where it had gotten her.
    *
    “Y OU OKAY IN HERE?”
    It was her guard, Patrice. She’d heard some of the others use his name. He opened the door and looked in.
    “I’m okay,” she said.
    He looked at her on the bed, spread out before his eyes like a slave